TURNING POINT: Juliette Engel.

X-ray Vision

Radiologist Sells Her Thriving Practice To Take Medical Expertise And Supplies To Russia

March 02, 1997|By Candace Dempsey. Special to the Tribune.

SEATTLE — An invitation to a 1990 citizens summit in Moscow not only completely changed the comfortable life of Dr. Juliette Engel, a Seattle radiologist specializing in prenatal ultrasound, but it also shook up her view of the world.

Six months after her visit to Moscow and her tour of its birthing centers, she sold her thriving radiology practice and founded MiraMed Institute, a non-profit organization that offers medical expertise and supplies to orphanages and hospitals in Russia and other parts of the world.

It stays afloat through donations and an independent operation called MiraMed International, which will offer 17 tours in 1997 to orphanages in picturesque but impoverished towns. Participants pay for their own trips and also donate suitcases full of medicine, clothing, school supplies and other necessities.

"When I went to Moscow that first time, I still believed in the evil empire," recalls Engel, 47. "I believed the Soviet Union was as technologically advanced as we were and that we were going there to meet our technological rivals.

"I expected the Soviet Union to be militaristic, aggressive and highly technological, but it was worse than a Third World country. They have no anesthetics, bad technique, no follow-up, no prenatal care. I realized that what I had believed was basically propaganda about a whole nation, and I decided that I'd never let anybody think for me again."

Engel discovered that Russia had an infant mortality rate of 20 per 1,000 births and a maternal death rate of 10 per 1,000, the highest rates in the industrial world. Images of this suffering haunted her when she returned to Seattle, and she knew she wanted to do something about it.

"I was dizzy for the next six months," she says. "It was like I had stepped through the looking glass into another reality. I couldn't get all the way back through the mirror again. I'd seen another world, and I couldn't shut it down.

"I had lots and lots of dreams about Russia. I'd see the same scenes over and over again and would want to understand and explain them. The situation over there was so severe for women. They don't see doctors until they go into labor, and then they're taken to the hospital in ambulances. They're stripped and shaved and taken away from their families. Then they're taken into a labor room where there are up to 30 other women. They have no monitoring equipment, not even a blood pressure cuff; so nobody can tell if something's going wrong. Finally, they're taken into a delivery room where there are at least six other women in labor."

But Engel also saw that Russia had much to offer.

"The air seemed very thin over here and thick and full of life over there. The cultures are so different. In Russia, every medical problem is couched in terms of the human soul, which we never think about in the West. We look at the body as an isolated biological mechanism. In Moscow I was talking about the effect of ultrasound on the body, and one doctor said, `What about the effect on the soul?' And I realized I'd never even heard a medical doctor mention the soul."

The more Engel thought about what she'd seen, the more determined she was to act.

"I was appalled by the lack of supplies. They didn't even have soap or rubber gloves. They were doing episiotomies without anesthetics, if you can imagine that."

But the decision to sell her radiology practice wasn't easy.

"Certainly I was scared. Would I be able to support myself? Would I lose my identity? I was very comfortable and had a good practice. So why was I still haunted by the suffering I saw? Why did I need to do something about it?

"It was a very chaotic time. People worried about me. The other doctors at the hospital had their doubts. But I'd done all I could as a radiologist. I'd always had the feeling that there was something more that I could do, that I wasn't finished. But I had no idea what I would do or when it would manifest itself. Now it seemed logical to start a non-profit organization to get medical care to women in the Soviet Union."

What clarified this vision was a recurring dream that took Engel a long time to understand.

"I was walking across a stone floor, and the tiles were black and white," she says. "There were clocks everywhere. It was a very ordered place. I could hear a heart beating, and I knew I was going to step off the edge into an unknown world. My life was so ordered and laid out and controlled by bank reports and patient records, but I saw that this new life would be chaotic and full of heart and soul."

To find out more about the Soviet Union before taking the final plunge, she made another trip there, this time to Ukraine.

"I went to hospitals and orphanages and to people they considered the best healers," she says. "I was able to experience trances, energy work and mantra. I was able to open myself to this new perception of life and my place in it. I realized that I had much to learn, that I didn't know a thing. Every day, I got hit on the head with that.